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I love the right words. I think economy and precision of language are important.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

We focus upon pairs of words very often which are the same in some areas and different in other areas.

Words are not trivial. They matter because they raise consciousness.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future.